{"id":4374,"date":"2024-07-11T18:06:27","date_gmt":"2024-07-11T18:06:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/foreverinourhearts\/?p=4374"},"modified":"2024-07-11T18:06:27","modified_gmt":"2024-07-11T18:06:27","slug":"remembering-the-life-of-the-shining-actress-shelley-duvall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/foreverinourhearts\/2024\/07\/remembering-the-life-of-the-shining-actress-shelley-duvall.html","title":{"rendered":"Remembering the Life of ‘The Shining’ Actress Shelley Duvall"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Public Domain\/Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Shelley Duvall, the actress who starred in seven movies directed by her mentor, Robert Altman and avoided the ax wielded by an unhinged Jack Nicholson in Stanley Kubrick\u2019s \u201cThe Shining,\u201d died at 75 years old. Her partner, Dan Gilroy, said Duvall had been in hospice and bedridden for the last few months due to complications from diabetes, adding that Duvall died in her sleep. Gilroy, her life partner since 1989, said, \u201cShe\u2019s gone after much suffering. I can\u2019t tell you how much I miss her.\u201d<\/p>\n

Duvall is best known for her roles in \u201cThe Shining\u201d with Jack Nicholson and \u201cPopeye\u201d with Robin Williams. Before she fled Hollywood for her native Texas in the mid-1990s, Duvall had a thriving career as a versatile, one-of-a-kind actress and head of her own production company, Think Entertainment, which created star-studded, innovative children\u2019s programming for cable television that netted her two Emmy Award nominations. While attending junior college in her hometown of Houston, Duvall was discovered by Altman staff members and talked into taking a screen test. She then made her onscreen debut as a teenage seductress and Astrodome tour guide, Suzanne Davis, in\u00a0\u201cBrewster\u00a0McCloud.\u201d A decade later, Duvall\u00a0sang<\/a>\u00a0and starred opposite Robin Williams as the iconic comic-strip character Olive\u00a0Oyl, the strong-willed damsel in distress, in Altman\u2019s live-action adaptation of \u201cPopeye.\u201d<\/p>\n

In between, the childlike star collaborated with Altman as a mail-order bride in\u00a0\u201cMcCabe & Mrs. Miller,\u201d the woman who has a Mississippi romance with bank robber Keith\u00a0Carradine\u00a0in\u00a0\u201cThieves Like Us,\u201d the groupie L.A. Joan, fond of hot pants and platform shoes, in\u00a0\u201cNashville,\u201d the wife of President Grover Cleveland in\u00a0\u201cBuffalo Bill and the Indians\u201d or \u201cSitting Bull\u2019s History Lesson,\u201d and as Millie\u00a0Lamoureaux, a fantasizing attendant at a Palm Springs health spa for older people, in\u00a0\u201c3 Women.\u201d<\/p>\n